PONGIQ

Help & Guide

Everything you need to play, challenge, and run tournaments on PongIQ — in plain language.

Get the app on your phone

PongIQ installs straight from the browser — no app store needed — and opens full-screen with its own icon, just like a native app.

iPhone: open pongiq.app in Safari → tap the menu in the address bar → Share → View More → Add to Home Screen.

Android: open pongiq.app in Chrome → tap the menu → Install and create shortcut.

Look for the orange ball icon on your home screen.

For players

  1. Create your account and profile

    Register with your email, then open your profile: add a photo, your handedness, grip, and playing style, and pick your club — or create your club right there if it isn’t listed yet (it becomes available for your clubmates too).

  2. Understand your rating

    Everyone starts at the same baseline — 900, whoever you are. It becomes yours the moment you play a rated match — tournament or challenge. Win against stronger players and it climbs fast; the Rankings board lists everyone with at least one rated match.

  3. Join tournaments

    Browse Tournaments and open one. Each tournament contains categories — the competitions you actually enter (Men’s Singles, Women’s Doubles…). Tap Enter, pick your categories (choose a partner for doubles), and wait for the organiser to accept.

  4. At the venue

    Scan the check-in QR at the door (or open the tournament page) and tap I’m here — one tap covers every category you entered, and the organiser sees you’ve arrived. When your match is called, scan the QR card on that table and it opens on your phone ready to score.

  5. Follow everything live

    Draws, brackets, group standings and live scores are public — share your match page with family and friends and they can watch from anywhere, no account needed.

Your rating, explained

Your rating measures how strong you are, not how often you play. PongIQ uses the same maths as Germany’s famous TTR system — the rating used by hundreds of thousands of club players in the biggest table tennis league system in the world.

Why 900? It’s not a score you’ve earned — it’s the standard starting guess for an adult club player. Every player starts on the same number, men and women alike, because PongIQ ranks everyone on one board. Think of it as “unknown player, assumed average.” Your real level takes over from your very first rated match.

How it moves. Before each match, the system estimates your win chance from the rating gap. Then:

  • Beat an equal opponent: you gain about 8–10 points, they lose the same.
  • Beat someone 150 points above you: a big upset — you can gain nearly 20–30.
  • Lose to someone much stronger: you lose almost nothing — the system expected it.
  • New players move faster (and juniors faster still), so your number finds your true level within a dozen matches, then stabilises.

Every point one player gains, their opponent loses — ratings can’t be farmed by playing often; they only move when results beat (or miss) expectations. That’s what makes the Rankings an honest list of playing strength: the #1 player is genuinely the strongest, not the busiest.

(This is a different philosophy from the ITTF World Ranking you see on TV, where professionals accumulate points from their best tournament results over a year. That system rewards results and activity at the elite level; a strength rating like ours is the standard for club communities — and a points-race leaderboard may come to PongIQ later as a separate, seasonal competition.)

Challenges, friendlies & chat

You don’t need a tournament to play a match that counts. Find anyone in Players, open their profile, and tap Challenge — pick best of 3, 5 or 7. When they accept, you both get a real score pad, and the result moves both your ratings, exactly like a tournament match. Singles friendlies are rated; doubles friendlies are playable too but not rated yet.

Arrange games in the app: the Lobby is one chat shared by every player — ask “anyone up for a game tonight?”, tap a name, challenge them. For one-to-one arranging, use Messages.

Where to play: the Venues directory lists halls and tables around the island — filter by region to find the ones near you, and by free or paid to find the ones you can just turn up to, with addresses, opening hours, table counts and a directions link. A venue shows no cost badge until somebody has actually checked. Organisers keep it current.

Players near you: set the part of Singapore you play in on your profile, and players filtering the Players list by their area will find you — a hit across the island is a hit nobody turns up to.

Entered a wrong result? Any completed friendly can be cancelled by mutual agreement: on the match page, one player taps Request void, the other side confirms, and any rating changes are reversed exactly — as if the match never happened. Both sides must agree — nobody can erase a loss on their own.

Scoring a match

Every match — group, knockout, or friendly — has its own score pad, so any number of tables can play at once. Open your match from the bracket or live board and tap the orange Score this match button (only the match’s players, an assigned umpire, or the organiser see it).

Tap the winner’s half of the screen after each point. The pad tracks serve rotation, tells you when to change ends, and closes each game at the right score for your category’s format — including formats like games-to-7. You never need to remember the rules mid-match.

Two ways to record a match. Opening a match asks you which you are doing. Pick “Already played” if the match is over — you then type the score of each game the way you would write it down (11–7, 9–11, 11–8) and save. That is the one to use if you are playing yourself and nobody is free to stand at the table, and it is much faster than tapping every point. Pick “Score as we play” to score live at the table, tapping after each rally. Either way it goes in as a full result: ratings, rankings and the bracket update identically.

Why did the game end there? A game goes to 11 — but you must win by two, so 10–10 keeps going until someone leads by two (12–10, 15–13, and so on). Some categories play to 7 instead; the pad follows whatever your category is set to. When the game ends, the pad shows the finishing score in large type and pauses, so nobody has to argue about what it was. Tap Continue for the next game — or, if that last point went to the wrong player, tap “Wrong score? Undo last point” right there on the same screen and score it again.

Made a mistake? Undo steps back one point at a time, even across games. The match only becomes final when you press Confirm result on the end screen — and injuries, no-shows and disqualifications are handled from the menu with the proper reason recorded.

Bad signal at the venue? Keep scoring. Points are saved on your phone and sync automatically when the connection returns — a banner shows how many are waiting, and the result can only be confirmed once everything has synced. Even closing the page keeps your points safe.

Rally detail (optional). Tap the Rally switch in the pad header and, after each point, a strip asks how many shots the rally lasted — one extra tap, and the next point still lands instantly if you ignore it. Capture it for a few matches and your profile grows a Game phases card: how you score in the first three balls (serve, receive, third ball) versus longer rallies. It only shows numbers once there’s enough data to be honest.

For organisers

Any account can become an organiser — the button is on your dashboard, and you keep your player profile. Running an event:

  1. Create the event and its categories

    Name, venue, dates — then add categories: discipline (singles/doubles/mixed), age group, draw size, seeds, and match format. Every field has a plain-language hint, and formats are fully flexible — including different formats per stage (e.g. best of 3 in groups, best of 5 from the quarterfinals, best of 7 final). Added one too many? Categories can be removed any time before their draw is run.

  2. Publish, collect entries, communicate

    Publish to open registration. The entries list shows each player’s photo, rating and club; accept them as they come in, then Auto-seed to freeze the seeding. Need to reach people? Message any participant directly, or Broadcast an announcement to everyone at once.

  3. Run the draw, print the QR poster

    In Draws: run (every placement follows ITTF rules and records why), approve, then lock — locking generates all the matches. Then print the QR poster from your event page and stick it up at the venue: players and spectators scan it and land straight on the live scores.

  4. Schedule the tables

    Open Schedule, set how many tables you have, your session window and the minimum rest between a player’s matches, then tap Run schedule. Every match is placed on a table and a time, respecting the rules that matter: nobody is ever double-booked (including across categories and doubles partners), knockout matches wait for the ones that feed them, and clubmates in the same group play first. Players see their times on their dashboard and on every match page. When a match overruns, tap Re-optimise — it reshuffles as little as possible and tells you exactly what moved.

  5. On the day: check-in, table cards, dispatch

    Print the poster (it now carries two QR codes: follow live and check in) and the table QR cards from your event page — one card per table. Players scan at the door and tap “I’m here”; your Check-in board shows “18 of 24 arrived” and lets you mark people present by hand. At the tables, the umpire scans that table’s card and the right match opens instantly — no hunting through a list. Then run the hall from the Dispatch board: every table shows in play (with elapsed time), free (with idle minutes and a one-tap “Assign next match”), or the reason it’s waiting. Idle tables sort to the top, so the table nobody is using is the first thing you see. Turn on Auto-dispatch in Schedule settings and the next eligible match is called the moment a table frees — skipping anyone already playing elsewhere, their doubles partner, and anyone who just finished. (If you want matches held until both players have scanned in, also tick Only call checked-in players.)

  6. Let the players score themselves

    Each match’s players score it on their own phone via Score this match — or assign umpires from your match board. Brackets, standings and ratings update live as results confirm. You can override a result if something goes wrong (it’s audited), and a test event can be deleted entirely — including reversing its rating changes.

Show it on the big screen. Every event has a venue TV mode — open /t/your-event/tv on a laptop plugged into a TV or projector and it cycles automatically through live matches, latest results, group standings and a big QR code for spectators to scan. No clicking needed all day.

Streaming your final? There’s a broadcast scoreboard overlay for OBS with a transparent background, so the score sits cleanly over your video. Setup instructions, plus the free public API for anyone who wants to pull results into a club website, are on the Developers page.

Glossary

Category
One competition inside a tournament — e.g. Men’s Singles OPEN. Players enter categories, not the tournament itself.
Draw
The official placement of every entry into the bracket or groups. PongIQ draws follow the ITTF rulebook and record the reason for every placement.
Seed
A top-rated entry given a protected placement so the best players can’t meet in early rounds. Seeds 1 and 2 are placed at opposite ends of the draw.
Bye
A free pass through round one, used when the bracket has more places than entries. Byes are placed against the seeds first — that’s the official rule.
Groups vs knockout
Knockout: lose once and you’re out. Groups: everyone plays everyone and the top finishers advance. Group standings use the full ITTF tie-break procedure.
Schedule
Tables × times for a whole event, generated for you: no player double-booked, minimum rest respected, knockout order preserved. Re-optimise when things run late and only what must move, moves.
Rally detail / Game phases
An optional extra tap per point recording how many shots the rally lasted. Enough of them and your profile shows how you score in the first three balls versus longer rallies — the same analysis coaches use, hidden until there’s enough data.
Check-in
Scanning the door QR (or tapping “I’m here” on the tournament page) tells the organiser you’ve arrived. It takes one tap and covers every category you entered.
Table card
The QR code taped to each table. Scan it and the match currently at that table opens on your phone — ready to score if you’re playing or umpiring it.
Dispatch
How matches get called to tables during an event. When a table frees up, the next eligible match is assigned — never a player who is mid-match elsewhere, playing in another category, or hasn’t rested yet.
Venue TV mode
A self-rotating full-screen display of live matches, results, standings and a scan-to-follow QR code — for a TV or projector at the hall. Find it at /t/your-event/tv.
Match format
“Best of 5, to 11” = first to win 3 games, each game to 11 points (win by 2). Every category sets its own, and stages can differ — short early, long late.
Challenge / friendly
A match arranged directly between players, no tournament needed. Accepted challenges get a real score pad; singles friendlies count for both ratings.
Void
Cancelling a friendly’s result by mutual agreement (e.g. wrong score entered). One side requests, the other confirms; any rating changes are reversed exactly.
Rating
Your playing strength as a number, updated after every rated singles match (TTR maths). Everyone starts at 900; it becomes yours with your first rated match.
Rankings
The public leaderboard at pongiq.app/rankings. One rated match gets you on the board.
Club
Your club or association, shown on your profile and used by draws to keep clubmates apart in early rounds. Can’t find yours? Create it from your profile.
Walkover / retirement
A walkover is a match won because the opponent didn’t play; a retirement is stopping mid-match. Recorded with reasons; never counted as on-table wins for ratings.
Win prediction
PongIQ’s honest estimate of each side’s chance before a match — always with a confidence label, and “not enough data” when that’s the truth. Our real track record is public on the accuracy page.

Still stuck? Create a practice tournament with a draw of 8 and click through the whole flow — nothing breaks, and you can delete it (ratings and all) when you’re done.